Incoherent E-mails

What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
slip past spam filter's? Are they just looking for a reply
acknowledgment, thus verifying a valid e-mail account? Or is there
something more serious going on?

In article <ItX1f.19668$q81.7919@trnddc06>,
phishee <phishee@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
>slip past spam filter's?

I'm assuming they're bugs in the spamming software. Or in the users
using them.

From: "phishee" <phishee@sbcglobal.net>

| What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
| slip past spam filter's? Are they just looking for a reply
| acknowledgment, thus verifying a valid e-mail account? Or is there
| something more serious going on?

Who can tell. You haven't posted a sample.

--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
http://www.ik-cs.com/got-a-virus.htm

* phishee <phishee@sbcglobal.net>:
> What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
> slip past spam filter's? Are they just looking for a reply
> acknowledgment, thus verifying a valid e-mail account? Or is there
> something more serious going on?

What are you doing reading my emails from my boss and users? ;)

Jason

"Jim Watt" <jimwatt@aol.no_way> wrote in message
news:pelhk1totk546jdl9lnec6v55b9q2jjm94@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 22:10:48 GMT, phishee <phishee@sbcglobal.net>
> wrote:
>
> >What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
> >slip past spam filter's?
>
> generally the purpose is to slip past spam filters and the
> message is in an attached .gif

...or HTML with no associated plain-text.

One that commonly gets through a lot uses SPANs to assemble letter couplets
into words. Impossible to defeat without a (very expensive, in processing
terms) rendition engine.

If only some of these people would employ a fraction of their ingenuity in
building legitimate stuff, the world would be a much better place ;o)

--

Hairy One Kenobi

Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this opinion do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of the highly-opinionated person expressing the opinion
in the first place. So there!

phishee <phishee@sbcglobal.net> writes:

>What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
>slip past spam filter's? Are they just looking for a reply
>acknowledgment, thus verifying a valid e-mail account? Or is there
>something more serious going on?

Maybe it is someones briljant idea on stealthy communication.
Encode your message using semi coherent plaintext and than send it
to a few milion people including the target. If some bad guy is
monitoring the targets e-mail he will think its just spam as he
probably received a copy himself in his private mailbox.
I cant get my mother to understand how PGP works, but she is quite
able to communicate rather incoherent. Maybe I could ask her to use
mass mailing, that way she does not even have to remember my e-mail
adress anymore;-)

Hairy One Kenobi wrote:

> "Jim Watt" <jimwatt@aol.no_way> wrote in message
> news:pelhk1totk546jdl9lnec6v55b9q2jjm94@4ax.com...
>> On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 22:10:48 GMT, phishee <phishee@sbcglobal.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
>> >slip past spam filter's?
>>
>> generally the purpose is to slip past spam filters and the
>> message is in an attached .gif
>
> ..or HTML with no associated plain-text.
>
> One that commonly gets through a lot uses SPANs to assemble letter
> couplets into words. Impossible to defeat without a (very expensive, in
> processing terms) rendition engine.
>
> If only some of these people would employ a fraction of their ingenuity in
> building legitimate stuff, the world would be a much better place ;o)
>

Damn good point.

Imhotep

Jim Watt wrote:

> On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 22:10:48 GMT, phishee <phishee@sbcglobal.net>
> wrote:
>
>>What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
>>slip past spam filter's?
>
> generally the purpose is to slip past spam filters and the
> message is in an attached .gif
> --
> Jim Watt
> http://www.gibnet.com

Exactly.

Imhotep

In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<ItX1f.19668$q81.7919@trnddc06>, phishee wrote:

> What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
> slip past spam filter's? Are they just looking for a reply
> acknowledgment, thus verifying a valid e-mail account?

Learn how mail is transported over the Internet. Your mail tool or
browser contacts your ISP's mail server. Spammers, viruses and 'bots tend
to bypass this step and try to contact the destination mail server direct.
Your ISP's mail server contacts the mail server at the destination, and
the two have a conversation that goes something like (paraphrased from
RFC0821 and RFC2821)

A: Hello B - my name is mail.example.com
B: Hello mail.example.com, pleased to meet you
A: I have mail from WxGhkfa@abc.def
B: <WxGhkfa@abc.def> Sender OK
A: Mail goes to Sucker@foo.com
B: <Sucker@foo.com> Recipient OK
A: Mail goes to Another.fool@foo.com
B: <Another.fool@foo.com> Recipient OK
A: Mail goes to Still.another@foo.com
B: <Still.another@foo.com> No such user
A: Mail goes to Still.another.fool@foo.com
B: <Still.another.fool@foo.com> Recipient OK
A: Mail Begins
B: Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself.
A: To: The Name you See in the To: header
A: From: The Name you See in the From: header
A: Subject: An offer you can't live without
A: Date: some.random.date/time
A:
A: Buy stuff from me at http://some.wankers.URL
A: .
B: OK, I got it
A: So long, sucker

A couple of points here. Note that the "I have mail from" (called the
envelope sender) and the 'From:' line (the body sender) have nothing to
do with each other. The same is true for the "Mail goes to" lines,
which (unless there is only one) never shows up in the mail you receive.
When there are multiple "Mail goes to" lines, each one gets the exact same
body - and the name in the "To:" line has nothing to do with delivering
the spam. The "From:" and "To:" lines can actually be missing, and the mail
will still be delivered to you - a function of that "Mail goes to" line.
See http://www.stopspam.org/email/headers.html if you want to learn more
about the real headers in the mail.

Now, the blank body isn't really considered blank, because what you see
in the To:, From:, Header, Date: and so on headers are considered part of
the body as far as the mail transport is concerned. If _that_ were missing,
the mail transport agent at the receiving end might complain, and could
drop the crap as incomplete. But look again at this conversation. Note
that three times, "B:" said "Recipient OK", and only once said "No such user".
Guess what - the spammer has confirmed that three addresses are valid. They
also confirmed that one address is bad - but that may not be important to
them, as it rarely costs them anything. Some mail servers may be configured
to tell the sender to shove it if it tries to send mail to to many
non-existent addresses, but that's not common enough. Maybe you didn't
do a d4mn thing - you didn't open the mail in some crappy browser that
auto-installs any executable linked in the mail - you didn't hit the reply
button to tell the spammer off... you did nothing. Heck you may not have
even turned on the computer to check your mail, but the bad guys have
confirmed that your address is real.

>Or is there something more serious going on?

It could also be that the spammers zombie program has a bug in it and crashed,
but this is less likely - the program still had to send that line that only
contained a dot which marks the end of a mail transmission. If the zombie
crashed after sending the To: From: or Subject: lines (or even part of what
you see in the body) and didn't send that line that only contains the dot,
the receiving mail server will wait (up to several minutes), and them toss
the mail away. The rules of mail transport say that the sender isn't done
until the receiving mail server says "OK, I got it". There would be a log
entry in the mail server, but you as a user would never see that.

Old guy

In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<ldo-8BC2F8.15243809102005@lust.ihug.co.nz>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> phishee <phishee@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>> What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
>> slip past spam filter's?
>
>I'm assuming they're bugs in the spamming software. Or in the users
>using them.

Nah - harvester 'bots. The messages occur far to often to be bugs or
brane-dead users. Scan through 'comp.mail.sendmail' and you'd spot
mail admins complaining about them.

Latest trick seems to be grabbing names out of telephone books, and trying
those as usernames - perhaps with one or two numbers tacked on, or leading
or trailing inital (smith3, jsmith, or smithj).

Used to be you'd create a username (as above), and an initial password by
mime-encoding or uuencoding the output of /dev/random. The password would
look like garbage, and the new user would change it to something they can
remember (and often quite insecure - but that's another story). Now, I'm
creating usernames the same way ('head -2 /dev/random | uuencode ZZZZ' then
take the first ten or twenty characters of the result). Might not be easy
to remember, but it's also pretty hard to guess. ;-)

Old guy

"Moe Trin" <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote in message
news:slrndkj30n.5h.ibuprofin@compton.phx.az.us...
> In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
> <ldo-8BC2F8.15243809102005@lust.ihug.co.nz>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

<snip>

> Used to be you'd create a username (as above), and an initial password by
> mime-encoding or uuencoding the output of /dev/random. The password would
> look like garbage, and the new user would change it to something they can
> remember (and often quite insecure - but that's another story). Now, I'm
> creating usernames the same way ('head -2 /dev/random | uuencode ZZZZ'
then
> take the first ten or twenty characters of the result). Might not be easy
> to remember, but it's also pretty hard to guess. ;-)

Add an easy-to-remember password that'll never get written down, and that's
good ol' fashioned security-by-obscurity.

Undoubtedly there was a very good reason for changing this, although it
slips my mind at the moment.. ;o)

As an aside, has anyone come across one of the phone number->word sites that
used to be around, a few years back? Used to be quite useful for converting
between PINs and passwords, I found.

H1K

P.S. My old College username was /so/ secure that I still use it for my
router password at home... no way that a dictionary attack is going to get
it (except maybe in Klingon?)

Moe Trin wrote:
> In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
> <ItX1f.19668$q81.7919@trnddc06>, phishee wrote:
>
>
>>What's the purpose of those semi-coherent or blank body e-mails that
>>slip past spam filter's? Are they just looking for a reply
>>acknowledgment, thus verifying a valid e-mail account?
>
>
> Learn how mail is transported over the Internet. Your mail tool or
> browser contacts your ISP's mail server. Spammers, viruses and 'bots tend
> to bypass this step and try to contact the destination mail server direct.
> Your ISP's mail server contacts the mail server at the destination, and
> the two have a conversation that goes something like (paraphrased from
> RFC0821 and RFC2821)
>
> A: Hello B - my name is mail.example.com
> B: Hello mail.example.com, pleased to meet you
> A: I have mail from WxGhkfa@abc.def
> B: <WxGhkfa@abc.def> Sender OK
> A: Mail goes to Sucker@foo.com
> B: <Sucker@foo.com> Recipient OK
> A: Mail goes to Another.fool@foo.com
> B: <Another.fool@foo.com> Recipient OK
> A: Mail goes to Still.another@foo.com
> B: <Still.another@foo.com> No such user
> A: Mail goes to Still.another.fool@foo.com
> B: <Still.another.fool@foo.com> Recipient OK
> A: Mail Begins
> B: Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself.
> A: To: The Name you See in the To: header
> A: From: The Name you See in the From: header
> A: Subject: An offer you can't live without
> A: Date: some.random.date/time
> A:
> A: Buy stuff from me at http://some.wankers.URL
> A: .
> B: OK, I got it
> A: So long, sucker
>
> A couple of points here. Note that the "I have mail from" (called the
> envelope sender) and the 'From:' line (the body sender) have nothing to
> do with each other. The same is true for the "Mail goes to" lines,
> which (unless there is only one) never shows up in the mail you receive.
> When there are multiple "Mail goes to" lines, each one gets the exact same
> body - and the name in the "To:" line has nothing to do with delivering
> the spam. The "From:" and "To:" lines can actually be missing, and the mail
> will still be delivered to you - a function of that "Mail goes to" line.
> See http://www.stopspam.org/email/headers.html if you want to learn more
> about the real headers in the mail.
>
> Now, the blank body isn't really considered blank, because what you see
> in the To:, From:, Header, Date: and so on headers are considered part of
> the body as far as the mail transport is concerned. If _that_ were missing,
> the mail transport agent at the receiving end might complain, and could
> drop the crap as incomplete. But look again at this conversation. Note
> that three times, "B:" said "Recipient OK", and only once said "No such user".
> Guess what - the spammer has confirmed that three addresses are valid. They
> also confirmed that one address is bad - but that may not be important to
> them, as it rarely costs them anything. Some mail servers may be configured
> to tell the sender to shove it if it tries to send mail to to many
> non-existent addresses, but that's not common enough. Maybe you didn't
> do a d4mn thing - you didn't open the mail in some crappy browser that
> auto-installs any executable linked in the mail - you didn't hit the reply
> button to tell the spammer off... you did nothing. Heck you may not have
> even turned on the computer to check your mail, but the bad guys have
> confirmed that your address is real.
>
>
>>Or is there something more serious going on?
>
>
> It could also be that the spammers zombie program has a bug in it and crashed,
> but this is less likely - the program still had to send that line that only
> contained a dot which marks the end of a mail transmission. If the zombie
> crashed after sending the To: From: or Subject: lines (or even part of what
> you see in the body) and didn't send that line that only contains the dot,
> the receiving mail server will wait (up to several minutes), and them toss
> the mail away. The rules of mail transport say that the sender isn't done
> until the receiving mail server says "OK, I got it". There would be a log
> entry in the mail server, but you as a user would never see that.
>
> Old guy


Excellent reply! Thanks for the effort.

Another issue I have seen recently is mime encoded e-mails that "appear"
to be blank but auto-execute code in improperly configured Outlook
express clients. Some send local machine information back to places
unknown some try to launch remote code on the local machine. These seem
to be specifically targeted to outlook express product.

Seems to me in the cyber world the good guys are losing...with
Microsoft's help (they still haven't fixed their old known holes and
opening new opportunities daily), the bad guys are winning....guess it's
been a bad day....

Winged

In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<36152$434db146$18d6d959$1509@KNOLOGY.NET>, Winged wrote:

>Excellent reply! Thanks for the effort.

You're welcome! Every once and a while, you see a thread where there is
a need for a 'basic concept' answer - so that the overall picture can
be made clearer.

>Another issue I have seen recently is mime encoded e-mails that "appear"
>to be blank but auto-execute code in improperly configured Outlook
>express clients.

Last five words hold the key - "improperly configured Outlook Express
clients". Microsoft realizes that most users haven't a chance at setting
up software, and so they configure it "so that it works". This requires
disabling or crippling all security features and warnings. They also make
it worse by providing the "Don't ever show this warning message again"
tic box. That this is a massive security problem isn't their concern.

Mime is legitimate. While you and I are in the USA and can use ASCII,
the rest of the world uses character sets that are not the same, and
thus need Mime encoding to transmit them. Not to rub it in, but your
news post that I'm responding to is using Mime version 1.0 and the
ISO-8859-1 character set - the "Latin Alphabet No. 1". So, mime is not
_all_ bad. ;-)

Personally, I really don't see the need for HTML based mail - I really
don't give a flying f*ck what color crayon and/or character font someone
tries to use to scribble mail, any more than I care about their idea how
my computer screen should look when displaying their message. I'm still
using the same mail tool I was using back in the early 1980s (Berkeley's
'mail') and it does one thing very well - it displays text. If there is an
attachment, I can use a tool like 'metamail' to decode it, but I normally
don't even bother doing anything except hitting the 'D' key and moving on.

>Some send local machine information back to places unknown some try to
>launch remote code on the local machine. These seem to be specifically
>targeted to outlook express product.

A line from the 1986 movie "Top Gun": 'This is a target rich environment'.
There are hundreds of millions of systems running OE wide open - by people
who really shouldn't be using anything as complicated as a push button
telephone. The result is that the bad guys don't have any hard work to
find suckers.

>Seems to me in the cyber world the good guys are losing...with
>Microsoft's help (they still haven't fixed their old known holes and
>opening new opportunities daily)

Some of us don't use microsoft products - the only ones I have at home are
two of the old Dove Bar mice.

>the bad guys are winning....guess it's been a bad day....

Just don't take the 20 m/m Gatling up to the top of the water tower. Besides,
the ammo is heavy. ;-)

Old guy

"Moe Trin" <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote in message news:slrndktuqt.jcu.ibuprofin@compton.phx.az.us...
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 19:27:12 -0500

> In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
> <36152$434db146$18d6d959$1509@KNOLOGY.NET>, Winged wrote:
>
> >Excellent reply! Thanks for the effort.
>
> You're welcome! Every once and a while, you see a thread where there is
> a need for a 'basic concept' answer - so that the overall picture can
> be made clearer.
>
> >Another issue I have seen recently is mime encoded e-mails that "appear"
> >to be blank but auto-execute code in improperly configured Outlook
> >express clients.
>
> Last five words hold the key - "improperly configured Outlook Express
> clients". Microsoft realizes that most users haven't a chance at setting
> up software, and so they configure it "so that it works". This requires
> disabling or crippling all security features and warnings. They also make
> it worse by providing the "Don't ever show this warning message again"
> tic box. That this is a massive security problem isn't their concern.

Hi Moe... It must have been along time since you have either Updated
a Windows machine or actually had used one. As this used to be MS'
SOP, but now they lock them down tight (since the XP SP2 anyway).
The tradeoff of course is that newbies can't get anything to work
anymore.

> Mime is legitimate. While you and I are in the USA and can use ASCII,
> the rest of the world uses character sets that are not the same, and
> thus need Mime encoding to transmit them. Not to rub it in, but your
> news post that I'm responding to is using Mime version 1.0 and the
> ISO-8859-1 character set - the "Latin Alphabet No. 1". So, mime is not
> _all_ bad. ;-)

In June 2004, the ISO/IEC working group responsible for
maintaining eight-bit coded character sets disbanded and ceased
all maintenance of ISO 8859, including ISO 8859-1, in order to
concentrate on the Universal Character Set and Unicode. In
computing applications, encodings that provide full UCS support
(such as UTF-8 and UTF-16) are finding increasing favor over
encodings based on ISO 8859-1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8859-1

> Personally, I really don't see the need for HTML based mail - I really
> don't give a flying f*ck what color crayon and/or character font someone
> tries to use to scribble mail, any more than I care about their idea how
> my computer screen should look when displaying their message. I'm still
> using the same mail tool I was using back in the early 1980s (Berkeley's
> 'mail') and it does one thing very well - it displays text. If there is an
> attachment, I can use a tool like 'metamail' to decode it, but I normally
> don't even bother doing anything except hitting the 'D' key and moving on.

I use HTML email when I need to use tables, bullets, newsletters,
pictures, etc. It's all part of the MIME standard. Nothing wrong
with that. Plain text is about 50 years old now. It is time for some
to quit hanging on to the old past. As it only makes one ill. As
modern computers have more power than yesteryear's mainframes. It is
time some people actually start using all of that computing power
and stop wasting it.

> >Some send local machine information back to places unknown some try to
> >launch remote code on the local machine. These seem to be specifically
> >targeted to outlook express product.
>
> A line from the 1986 movie "Top Gun": 'This is a target rich environment'.
> There are hundreds of millions of systems running OE wide open - by people
> who really shouldn't be using anything as complicated as a push button
> telephone. The result is that the bad guys don't have any hard work to
> find suckers.

Since the bad guys always finds loopholes in the law, I believe you
should blame the lawmakers IMHO. As I feel they are failing us
*all*. Blame the cause and not the symptoms.

> >Seems to me in the cyber world the good guys are losing...with
> >Microsoft's help (they still haven't fixed their old known holes and
> >opening new opportunities daily)
>
> Some of us don't use microsoft products - the only ones I have at home are
> two of the old Dove Bar mice.

And some of us do and we also have used other OS in our time as
well. And there is nothing wrong with Microsoft products per se.

> >the bad guys are winning....guess it's been a bad day....
>
> Just don't take the 20 m/m Gatling up to the top of the water tower. Besides,
> the ammo is heavy. ;-)
>
> Old guy

I disagree. As I see the good guys are winning, despite the flaws in
the lawmakers. <grin>


__________________________________________________
Bill (using a Toshiba 2595XDVD under Windows 2000)
-- written and edited within WordStar 5.0

BillW50 wrote:
> "Moe Trin" <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote in message news:slrndktuqt.jcu.ibuprofin@compton.phx.az.us...
> Hi Moe... It must have been along time since you have either Updated
> a Windows machine or actually had used one. As this used to be MS'
> SOP, but now they lock them down tight

yes, they do - they lock them down so tight that seriously experienced
WinBlows Sysadmins are chasing their tails trying to find out Why TF
their systems don't work any more!!

(since the XP SP2 anyway).
> The tradeoff of course is that newbies

and sysadmins

can't get anything to work
> anymore.
>
>
> In June 2004, the ISO/IEC working group responsible for
> maintaining eight-bit coded character sets disbanded and ceased
> all maintenance of ISO 8859, including ISO 8859-1, in order to
> concentrate on the Universal Character Set and Unicode. In
> computing applications, encodings that provide full UCS support
> (such as UTF-8 and UTF-16) are finding increasing favor over
> encodings based on ISO 8859-1.

You obviously totally fail to realise that 7-bit ASCII and Extended
ASCII (aka ISO 8859-1) are, and will continue to be recognised subsets
of UFT-8 and UTF-16. If you don't realise this, then you obviously have
no clue as to what Unicode is all about, or how it works.

> I use HTML email when I need to use tables, bullets, newsletters,
> pictures, etc. It's all part of the MIME standard. Nothing wrong
> with that. Plain text is about 50 years old now.

But you seriously misunderstand that presentation and content _should_
and _must_ be separated - that is precisely why we are in the M$ induced
horror of ActiveX, etc, etc.......

> It is time for some to quit hanging on to the old past. It is
> time some people actually start using all of that computing power

It has fuck all to do with computing power!! My Linux server is a P-II
350 - it does its job - it sits there and *serves*

>
> Since the bad guys always finds loopholes in the law, I believe you
> should blame the lawmakers IMHO. As I feel they are failing us
> *all*. Blame the cause and not the symptoms.

OK - I can go with that one! Perhaps we need to start with the US & GB
governments who are happy to promulgate illegal wars.

> And there is nothing wrong with Microsoft products per se.

In the words of JM `You cannot be serious'

> Bill (using a Toshiba 2595XDVD under Windows 2000)
> -- written and edited within WordStar 5.0

OK, well I see you are not toally beyond redemption then, Bill ;)

Steve

"Steve Welsh" <nobody@linux.bogus> wrote in message
news:j-GdnZOEzqG3qs3enZ2dnUVZ8qSdnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk...
> BillW50 wrote:
> > "Moe Trin" <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote in message
news:slrndktuqt.jcu.ibuprofin@compton.phx.az.us...
> > Hi Moe... It must have been along time since you have either Updated
> > a Windows machine or actually had used one. As this used to be MS'
> > SOP, but now they lock them down tight
>
> yes, they do - they lock them down so tight that seriously experienced
> WinBlows Sysadmins are chasing their tails trying to find out Why TF
> their systems don't work any more!!

Not the competent ones (i.e. the one that either test before deployment or,
in smaller shops, simply read about the tests that other people have
done...)

> > In June 2004, the ISO/IEC working group responsible for
> > maintaining eight-bit coded character sets disbanded and ceased
> > all maintenance of ISO 8859, including ISO 8859-1, in order to
> > concentrate on the Universal Character Set and Unicode. In
> > computing applications, encodings that provide full UCS support
> > (such as UTF-8 and UTF-16) are finding increasing favor over
> > encodings based on ISO 8859-1.
>
> You obviously totally fail to realise that 7-bit ASCII and Extended
> ASCII (aka ISO 8859-1) are, and will continue to be recognised subsets
> of UFT-8 and UTF-16. If you don't realise this, then you obviously have
> no clue as to what Unicode is all about, or how it works.

Hmm. Neither side is distinguishing themselves with this one ;o)

Shame on you! A Brit who doesn't realise the importance of Unicode *clients*
(unless someone's trying to be a little disingenuous..)

A server platform often just transports stuff around that's been encoded by
one client, and will be decoded by another client. Add a DMBS storing text,
and you might be rather tightly-coupled to the client, but that's getting
away from the pure transport side. Which, if we're to make any sense of your
arguments, we seem to be talking about.

The client, OTOH, either requires a different version for each and every
language (the traditional technique, using fast footwork with code pages),
or uses Unicode where required and takes the memory and/or bandwidth hit.

With the argument over the esset now sorted, I certainly haven't seen any
proposals to add new letters to the alphabets of any European languages. So
I can't see any need to maintain the associated ISO standard. Hell, ASCII
hasn't changed for /decades/...

> > I use HTML email when I need to use tables, bullets, newsletters,
> > pictures, etc. It's all part of the MIME standard. Nothing wrong
> > with that. Plain text is about 50 years old now.
>
> But you seriously misunderstand that presentation and content _should_
> and _must_ be separated - that is precisely why we are in the M$ induced
> horror of ActiveX, etc, etc.......

Tut, tut. Quite apart from the fact that, by definition, email content is
100% pure content (lookee, they even use the "c" word), you are either
mixing up basic programming concepts in your head, or have a major problem
is understanding the concepts of data and content.

And, quite possibly, the purpose of SGML.

> > It is time for some to quit hanging on to the old past. It is
> > time some people actually start using all of that computing power
>
> It has fuck all to do with computing power!! My Linux server is a P-II
> 350 - it does its job - it sits there and *serves*

Fine. Dandy. And if you're running a bunch of client software on it, then
you also need to take a good, hard look at Industry Best Practise for the
last couple of decades ;o)

--

Hairy One Kenobi

Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this opinion do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of the highly-opinionated person expressing the opinion
in the first place. So there!

"Steve Welsh" <nobody@linux.bogus> wrote in message news:j-
GdnZOEzqG3qs3enZ2dnUVZ8qSdnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk...
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 23:55:33 +0100

> BillW50 wrote:
> > In June 2004, the ISO/IEC working group responsible for
> > maintaining eight-bit coded character sets disbanded and ceased
> > all maintenance of ISO 8859, including ISO 8859-1, in order to
> > concentrate on the Universal Character Set and Unicode. In
> > computing applications, encodings that provide full UCS support
> > (such as UTF-8 and UTF-16) are finding increasing favor over
> > encodings based on ISO 8859-1.
>
> You obviously totally fail to realise that 7-bit ASCII and Extended
> ASCII (aka ISO 8859-1) are, and will continue to be recognised
> subsets of UFT-8 and UTF-16. If you don't realise this, then you
> obviously have no clue as to what Unicode is all about, or how it
> works.

Actually Steve, all email and I believe including newsgroup messages has
to be compatible with US-ASCII during transport. This doesn't mean that
it has to be readable as English text, but all characters have to be
printable as ASCII (7-bit) compatible characters.

What MIME does is when sending, may get converted (encoded) to ASCII.
This is to insure that dino systems out there won't get confused with
coming across non-ASCII characters. And when it is received, MIME tells
the system what character set it is encoded with so it can correctly
decode it back.

> > I use HTML email when I need to use tables, bullets, newsletters,
> > pictures, etc. It's all part of the MIME standard. Nothing wrong
> > with that. Plain text is about 50 years old now.
>
> But you seriously misunderstand that presentation and content
> _should_ and _must_ be separated - that is precisely why we are in
> the M$ induced horror of ActiveX, etc, etc.......

Don't like ActiveX? Turn it off, no big deal. And I never ran across a
bad ActiveX Control that didn't ask to be installed first. It's no big
deal of any threat that I can see.

> > It is time for some to quit hanging on to the old past. It is
> > time some people actually start using all of that computing power
>
> It has fuck all to do with computing power!! My Linux server is a P-
> II 350 - it does its job - it sits there and *serves*

I'm using an Intel Celeron(R) 400MHz under Windows 2000. Which hardware-
wise is probably slower than your Linux machine. And this machine under
Windows 2000 also does the job as well. I have another laptop which is
the same model, but with Windows 98SE installed. It also does great as
well. Both have the max 192MB of RAM installed. Btw, from your header, I
see you're on a Windows machine right now.

> > Since the bad guys always finds loopholes in the law, I believe you
> > should blame the lawmakers IMHO. As I feel they are failing us
> > *all*. Blame the cause and not the symptoms.
>
> OK - I can go with that one! Perhaps we need to start with the US &
> GB governments who are happy to promulgate illegal wars.
>
> > And there is nothing wrong with Microsoft products per se.
>
> In the words of JM `You cannot be serious'

Dead serious! There are millions of machines running just fine with
Microsoft products installed. Including my own. Yes, some people have
trouble with them. But those same people generally blame the wrong cause
to their problems anyway from my experiences.

> > Bill (using a Toshiba 2595XDVD under Windows 2000)
> > -- written and edited within WordStar 5.0
>
> OK, well I see you are not toally beyond redemption then, Bill ;)

I'm using Word 2000 this time to edit this reply. I guess to you I just
sank a few notches, eh?

______________________________________________
Bill (using a Toshiba 2595XDVD & Windows 2000)
-- written and edited within Word 2000

In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<zIR3f.2561$tV6.223@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>, BillW50 wrote:

>Hi Moe... It must have been along time since you have either Updated
>a Windows machine or actually had used one.

Yup - got rid of that crap in 1992. It's so much easier when the
staff at the non-profit I occasionally help (who knows I'm working on
computers) comes by wailing about the latest mall-ware infestation and
is asking for help - sorry, I don't do windoze. Funny how the two servers
I've set up for them (which _don't_ run windoze) just keep on working.

>As this used to be MS' SOP, but now they lock them down tight (since
>the XP SP2 anyway).

So - all of the problems reported on Bugtraq must refer to earlier
versions. Funny that it doesn't look that way.

>The tradeoff of course is that newbies can't get anything to work
>anymore.

I dunno - last month or so when there was yet another worm problem, the
local news radio station has a quick interview with the klowns who run
the weekly computer help show (actually, they run a chain of stores
here in the Phoenix metro area) who are telling people to get the latest
virus update, but they _still_ are recommending people not get SP-2
because of all the things it breaks.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8859-1

I've never considered them an authority.

>I use HTML email when I need to use tables, bullets, newsletters,
>pictures, etc. It's all part of the MIME standard.

Actually you should check the standards documents - MIME is _still_ a
draft standard (RFC2045 - 2049) - even though it's been through several
re-writes (RFC1341 - June 1992, RFC1521 - Sept. 1993) and the current
drafts from November 1996).

I also use a simple filter on the mail server to reject any HTML mail
before it's accepted for delivery by the server.

>Plain text is about 50 years old now.

Oh, really?

>It is time for some to quit hanging on to the old past. As it only makes
>one ill.

I've yet to see a convincing need for HTML - thanks to

>As modern computers have more power than yesteryear's mainframes. It is
>time some people actually start using all of that computing power
>and stop wasting it.

Apparently you feel it necessary to use that computing power to draw
pictures of words - I only need to see the words themselves in raw text.
I really do find other uses for my CPU cycles.

>> Some of us don't use microsoft products

>And some of us do and we also have used other OS in our time as
>well. And there is nothing wrong with Microsoft products per se.

Then you are welcome to use them. Just don't expect everyone else to,
and don't expect others not to laugh at this.

>Bill (using a Toshiba 2595XDVD under Windows 2000)
>-- written and edited within WordStar 5.0

Never got into WordStar - but if that's all you are touting, there are a
number of applications that emulate it, and run on many other operating
systems. One example might be 'jed' which runs on anything that can have
the 'slang' library (DOS, doze, OS/2, old and new Mac/OS, VAX/VMS, UNIX
and clones such as *BSD and Linux).

Old guy

>
>
> I'm using Word 2000 this time to edit this reply. I guess to you I just
> sank a few notches, eh?
>

Not at all, Bill :)

As it happens I'm sending this via XP Pro (but using Thunderbird)

Doesn't mitigate my feelings about what Gates (Jnr) is trying to do. I
think if we declare him King of the World, with Bush as Pres, and Blair
as Vice Pres, and RIAA being the new Spetsnaz, then we all need to worry!

> ______________________________________________
> Bill (using a Toshiba 2595XDVD & Windows 2000)
> -- written and edited within Word 2000
>

"Moe Trin" <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote in message
news:slrndl2o8v.6nm.ibuprofin@compton.phx.az.us...
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 15:05:54 -0500

> In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
> <zIR3f.2561$tV6.223@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>, BillW50 wrote:
>
> >Hi Moe... It must have been along time since you have either Updated
> >a Windows machine or actually had used one.
>
> Yup - got rid of that crap in 1992. It's so much easier when the
> staff at the non-profit I occasionally help (who knows I'm working
> on computers) comes by wailing about the latest mall-ware
> infestation and is asking for help - sorry, I don't do windoze.

Funny Moe... I hated Windows and I wouldn't have it until '93. My father
purchased a Windows 3.1 machine and wanted me to help him set it up. And
I found it quite pleasing and went out and bought the same machine as he
did. And I've been happy ever since. In fact, I still enjoy working on a
Windows 3.1 machine. <grin>

Before Windows 3.1, I've used mostly character based OS. Although I was
a big GEOS fan before my first Windows 3.1 experience. Although the GEOS
people had MS beat, but then sat on their butts and they didn't improve
it. And they waited for third parties to make applications for it. Later
they blamed MS for their failure. How dumb!

And while I believe you actually don't always have to have experience to
be some sort of expert with a given subject. But in this case, I believe
you are in trouble. As you have no idea whether the reports of Windows
problems are really do to Windows or not. Believe it or not, most have
nothing to do with bugs within the software at all.

> Funny how the two servers I've set up for them (which _don't_ run
> windoze) just keep on working.

All of my Windows machines are also doing well and keeps on working.
Say, did you know Linus Torvalds secretly runs Windows? Yup, he says so
right in his book. I guess his own Linux isn't as productive (and fun)
as Windows.

> >As this used to be MS' SOP, but now they lock them down tight (since
> >the XP SP2 anyway).
>
> So - all of the problems reported on Bugtraq must refer to earlier
> versions. Funny that it doesn't look that way.

I don't know what Bugtraq is saying, but I would guess some have gone in
their settings and turned off all of the safeguards so everything will
work. Unfortunately, including the viruses, trojans, etc. But that is
the users fault, now isn't it?

> >The tradeoff of course is that newbies can't get anything to work
> >anymore.
>
> I dunno - last month or so when there was yet another worm problem,
> the local news radio station has a quick interview with the klowns
> who run the weekly computer help show (actually, they run a chain
> of stores here in the Phoenix metro area) who are telling people to
> get the latest virus update, but they _still_ are recommending
> people not get SP-2 because of all the things it breaks.

Well I also agree with that thought. Get the updates, but stay away from
SP2. Some like SP2 and some don't. Maybe better, stay away from XP if
you can help it and use Windows 2000 instead.

> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8859-1
>
> I've never considered them an authority.

So what are you saying? The members who controls the ISO-8859-1 standard
hasn't moved on to bigger and better things?

> >I use HTML email when I need to use tables, bullets, newsletters,
> >pictures, etc. It's all part of the MIME standard.
>
> Actually you should check the standards documents - MIME is _still_
> a draft standard (RFC2045 - 2049) - even though it's been through
> several re-writes (RFC1341 - June 1992, RFC1521 - Sept. 1993) and
> the current drafts from November 1996).

Every RFC document seems to me to be a draft standard. Is it just me?

> I also use a simple filter on the mail server to reject any HTML mail
> before it's accepted for delivery by the server.

You could do what I do. View most (or in your case all) HTML messages as
ASCII. No not with the HTML tags and all, but all tags stripped out and
just the plain ASCII text comes through. In fact, Outlook Express v6
does this with an update. Very simple to use.

Other email programs do the same thing. It's one thing to use an emailer
that can't display HTML email (which I don't understand why one would
want to). But to be able to, but delete them without reading doesn't
make any sense to me (unless they are spam).

> >Plain text is about 50 years old now.
>
> Oh, really?

Yup, the ASCII standard is about 50 years old now. Remember daisywheel
printers? I still have one. Ah life before GUI. <grin>

> >It is time for some to quit hanging on to the old past. As it only
> >makes one ill.
>
> I've yet to see a convincing need for HTML - thanks to

I had a discussion with an old friend of mine who used a character based
OS (non-GUI) and stated there was no need for a color monitor (he didn't
have one for starters). And you sound a lot like him IMHO. Anyway when
I'm using a character based OS, I love color monitors. As the colorful
menus allows one to make things easier to find. Same is true for HTML
email as well. And all of this linking sure beats plain text only
messages.

> >As modern computers have more power than yesteryear's mainframes. It
> >is time some people actually start using all of that computing power
> >and stop wasting it.
>
> Apparently you feel it necessary to use that computing power to
> draw pictures of words - I only need to see the words themselves in
> raw text. I really do find other uses for my CPU cycles.

Making things easier to see and understand are fine uses of CPU time. As
let the computer do most of the work while you relax a bit. That makes
sense to me.

> >> Some of us don't use microsoft products
>
> >And some of us do and we also have used other OS in our time as
> >well. And there is nothing wrong with Microsoft products per se.
>
> Then you are welcome to use them. Just don't expect everyone else to,
> and don't expect others not to laugh at this.

Those that laugh don't actually realize that the joke is actually on
them. I'll use any OS and have. And Windows isn't worse than the others
out there in reality.

> >Bill (using a Toshiba 2595XDVD under Windows 2000)
> >-- written and edited within WordStar 5.0
>
> Never got into WordStar - but if that's all you are touting, there

No I also use other word processors and text editors as well. Although
WordStar v5 (didn't care for later versions, yes I have them too) and MS
Word 2000 are my favorites for editing and composing ASCII text. And I
have created macros (which launch with hotkeys) for each to make this
task a blast! Remember; let the computer do the work.

> are a number of applications that emulate it, and run on many other
> operating systems. One example might be 'jed' which runs on
> anything that can have the 'slang' library (DOS, doze, OS/2, old
> and new Mac/OS, VAX/VMS, UNIX and clones such as *BSD and Linux).
>
> Old guy

Yes, I've seen these before. Well a program which uses the WordStar CTRL
command set doesn't make it like WordStar (WordStar for Windows isn't
like the old WordStar either). They are completely different and don't
work the same. Some of them do come close like VDE, but the original
WordStar is still better IMHO. But thanks for the tip. Oh I also use
WordStar on my old CP/M machines as well. Yet oddly enough, the first
code was written on a 6502 CPU. Although I don't know of any version
that actually ran on a 6502. CP/M and DOS versions were the most
popular.

______________________________________________
Bill (using a Toshiba 2595XDVD & Windows 2000)
-- written and edited within Word 2000

In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<8Je4f.1213$q%.433@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com>, BillW50 wrote:

>Funny Moe... I hated Windows and I wouldn't have it until '93. My father
>purchased a Windows 3.1 machine and wanted me to help him set it up. And
>I found it quite pleasing and went out and bought the same machine as he
>did. And I've been happy ever since. In fact, I still enjoy working on a
>Windows 3.1 machine. <grin>

I was assigned a PC (a genuine PC-AT) in 1983 because the system development
tools (basically assemblers for the TI 9900, Intel 8080/8085 and Fairchild
F8 microprocessors and a EPROM zapper with the interface program running
on DOS) were only available for that platform. I finished that program in
1992, and there went the need for DOS/windoze. It was far to limiting an
O/S - single user, single tasking, lacking much of the capabilities that I
had in the UNIX boxes I was also using.

>And while I believe you actually don't always have to have experience to
>be some sort of expert with a given subject. But in this case, I believe
>you are in trouble.

Actually, not - we don't have any windoze boxes, either at work (an R&D
facility) or at home. So, I really could care less what happens to windoze.

>As you have no idea whether the reports of Windows problems are really
>do to Windows or not. Believe it or not, most have nothing to do with
>bugs within the software at all.

I think everyone is aware that most people using computers really shouldn't
be - they lack the incentive to learn, and therefore don't - which results
in a huge number of cracked or b0rken boxes. However, if that were the
only reason, microsoft wouldn't be issuing those monthly updates, would they.

Of course, another problem is users who can't be bothered to learn more
than one piece of software, and insist on using the only tool they've
partially learned \9a web browser) for mail, news, web, and the
auto-installation and operation of malware. The "brighter" ones then
go out and buy extra crap like spyware removal tools, anti-virus, and
anti-trojan tools - and don't bother to think why the huge after-market
even exists in the first place. Is Symantec (one example) capable of
writing more secure code than microsoft? Seems so.

>Say, did you know Linus Torvalds secretly runs Windows? Yup, he says so
>right in his book.

You want to think about that? If it's secret, why would he be writing it
in his book? I run windows too - except it's called "The X Window System"
and is just a shade incompatible with the stuff from Redmond. I assume
you realize microsoft isn't the only one using that term.

>I guess his own Linux isn't as productive (and fun) as Windows.

What ever. It does seem to keep him occupied, and Bill Allen was happy
as a clam to have him working for Transmeta. I really don't care what
he, or anyone else uses. You seem to not understand GPL or the BSD
license and what they imply.

>I don't know what Bugtraq is saying,

Surprise yourself - take a look. Some of it is hilarious. You don't even
have to subscribe if you don't want to

[compton ~]$ grep -c bugtraq .newsrc
19
[compton ~]$

The news server I use (giganews) carries 19 separate feeds.

>Unfortunately, including the viruses, trojans, etc. But that is
>the users fault, now isn't it?

Yup - thats why microsoft.com got shut down in early 2003 with the
Slammer (aka Sapphire) worm. Personally, I don't follow the latest
malware - I'm seeing more reports of unopened mail on windoze boxes
managing to bypass all security, but that's of passing interest at
most. Sort of like your daily fix from rec.humor.funny.

>Maybe better, stay away from XP if you can help it and use Windows
>2000 instead.

Why? I haven't seen a need to run any version of windoze at home or
at work in years.

>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8859-1
>>
>> I've never considered them an authority.
>
>So what are you saying?

wikipedia.org isn't noted as being the final authority.

>Every RFC document seems to me to be a draft standard. Is it just me?

[compton ~]$ zgrep -c '^[0-9]' rfcs/rfc-index.10.14.05.txt.gz
4176
[compton ~]$ zgrep -A1 Status rfcs/rfc-index.10.14.05.txt.gz | tr -s ' '
'\n' | tr '\n' ' ' | tr ')' '\n' | grep 'Status: [A-Z]' | sed s'/.*(//'
| sort | uniq -c | column
112 Status: BEST CURRENT PRACTICE 1269 Status: INFORMATIONAL
116 Status: DRAFT STANDARD 1220 Status: PROPOSED STANDARD
241 Status: EXPERIMENTAL 86 Status: STANDARD
145 Status: HISTORIC 909 Status: UNKNOWN
[compton ~]$ zgrep -c '^[0-9]* *Not Issued' rfcs/rfc-index.10.14.05.txt.gz
78
[compton ~]$

I could say "it's just you" - but I won't. There are a few. For example,
RFC0821 and 0822 are standards for SMTP and text messages and both have
been "obsoleted" (by RFC2821 and 2822), but the original docs remain listed
as "STANDARD", and the replacements are only a "PROPOSED STANDARD". (In case
you can't follow the commands above - first one says there are 4176 RFCs.
The second strips out the status term and counts them - the last notes that
78 were not issued.)

>You could do what I do. View most (or in your case all) HTML messages as
>ASCII.

Why? The people who send me legitimate mail know I don't do HTML - in
fact, their mail server bounce the mail so they know they screwed up.
Others - obviously I could care less.

>But to be able to, but delete them without reading doesn't
>make any sense to me (unless they are spam).

Spam, noise - I don't _have_ to care. They are irrelevant.

>Yup, the ASCII standard is about 50 years old now. Remember daisywheel
>printers? I still have one. Ah life before GUI. <grin>

So, you don't count Baudot? It's just a bit older, though I haven't used
a Teletype since the late 1950's. Most people don't know what they are
unless they've seen movies made in the 1930's and 1940's where these were
seen/heard clanking away in "the news room".

>I'm using a character based OS, I love color monitors. As the colorful
>menus allows one to make things easier to find.

Where's the menu item that runs that zgrep/strip/count routine above?
I do run a GUI - there are 20 text terminals on six panes of this desktop.
Funny thing is - not one icon. Not one menu in sight, although there is
one used to stop the desktop, or create a new terminal. Old saying:
"A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in."

>Same is true for HTML email as well. And all of this linking sure beats
>plain text only messages.

Funny - I have four browsers on this box - lynx, links, opera and netscape
in order of use. I don't recall the last time I used either of the last
two. The first two are text only - lynx doesn't do frames, though links
does. I also have 'wget' but I don't count that as a browser. I can often
do a google search with lynx and be done in less time than it takes to
kick netscape out of hibernation. As I say - I haven't seen much use of
HTML, except for the occasional web search engine visit.

One of the major security holes with HTML is klowns clicking on URLs. A
lot of problems are eliminated with just a cut and paste (never mind
manually typing the URL), but as noted above - that's way to hard for
the average computer user, and the bad guys can exploit this trivially.

>Making things easier to see and understand are fine uses of CPU time. As
>let the computer do most of the work while you relax a bit. That makes
>sense to me.

That's what I use them for.

>No I also use other word processors and text editors as well.

I use precisely three editors. You can see one of them demonstrated
above, called 'sed'.

>the original WordStar is still better IMHO.

When I was using a PC, the guy in the next office used WordStar over DOS 3.1.
I honestly can't recall that much about it, other than he had it set with a
light blue background and white text, and he could make it produce ASCII.
I used something else - I think it was called SpellBinder - but after 14
years, I've recycled those neurons.

Old guy

"Moe Trin" <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote in message news:slrndl5l7s.mg7.ibuprofin@compton.phx.az.us...
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 17:32:37 -0500

> In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
> <8Je4f.1213$q%.433@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com>, BillW50 wrote:
>
> >Funny Moe... I hated Windows and I wouldn't have it until '93. My father
> >purchased a Windows 3.1 machine and wanted me to help him set it up. And
> >I found it quite pleasing and went out and bought the same machine as he
> >did. And I've been happy ever since. In fact, I still enjoy working on a
> >Windows 3.1 machine. <grin>
>
> I was assigned a PC (a genuine PC-AT) in 1983 because the system development
> tools (basically assemblers for the TI 9900, Intel 8080/8085 and Fairchild
> F8 microprocessors and a EPROM zapper with the interface program running
> on DOS) were only available for that platform. I finished that program in
> 1992, and there went the need for DOS/windoze. It was far to limiting an
> O/S - single user, single tasking, lacking much of the capabilities that I
> had in the UNIX boxes I was also using.

I was using DEC, CP/M and Commodores back in those days. I wasn't
burning EPROMs until a few years later.

> >And while I believe you actually don't always have to have experience to
> >be some sort of expert with a given subject. But in this case, I believe
> >you are in trouble.
>
> Actually, not - we don't have any windoze boxes, either at work (an R&D
> facility) or at home. So, I really could care less what happens to windoze.

Thus my question... what makes you any kind of Windows expert if you
just don't care? I at least care and that makes me a bit more of an
expert than you are, right?

> >As you have no idea whether the reports of Windows problems are really
> >do to Windows or not. Believe it or not, most have nothing to do with
> >bugs within the software at all.
>
> I think everyone is aware that most people using computers really shouldn't
> be - they lack the incentive to learn, and therefore don't - which results
> in a huge number of cracked or b0rken boxes. However, if that were the
> only reason, microsoft wouldn't be issuing those monthly updates, would they.

In the early beginning I used to be part of the computer elite gods
as well. But I didn't like the idea that *we* computer elite gods
*shouldn't* hand over the power of the computer to the masses. Thus
I branched off and isolated myself so to speak.

> Of course, another problem is users who can't be bothered to learn more
> than one piece of software, and insist on using the only tool they've
> partially learned \9a web browser) for mail, news, web, and the
> auto-installation and operation of malware. The "brighter" ones then
> go out and buy extra crap like spyware removal tools, anti-virus, and
> anti-trojan tools - and don't bother to think why the huge after-market
> even exists in the first place. Is Symantec (one example) capable of
> writing more secure code than microsoft? Seems so.

Yeah so? There are people who don't get into computers as we do. All
they want computers for is to do their bidding for them. I see
nothing wrong with that, if that is all you want.

> >Say, did you know Linus Torvalds secretly runs Windows? Yup, he says so
> >right in his book.
>
> You want to think about that? If it's secret, why would he be writing it
> in his book? I run windows too - except it's called "The X Window System"
> and is just a shade incompatible with the stuff from Redmond. I assume
> you realize microsoft isn't the only one using that term.

That isn't what I call Windows (tm). What you are talking about is
windows (lowercase) and GUI.

> >I guess his own Linux isn't as productive (and fun) as Windows.
>
> What ever. It does seem to keep him occupied, and Bill Allen was happy
> as a clam to have him working for Transmeta. I really don't care what
> he, or anyone else uses. You seem to not understand GPL or the BSD
> license and what they imply.

It's Paul Allen for starters. And maybe I don't fully understand
GPL/BSD licenses. Why don't you tell us about it? Although I'd be
really surprised if you say something that I didn't already know.

> >I don't know what Bugtraq is saying,
>
> Surprise yourself - take a look. Some of it is hilarious. You don't even
> have to subscribe if you don't want to
>
> [compton ~]$ grep -c bugtraq .newsrc
> 19
> [compton ~]$
>
> The news server I use (giganews) carries 19 separate feeds.

Giganews might be important to you, but I'm still waiting to form
opinion about them.

> >Unfortunately, including the viruses, trojans, etc. But that is
> >the users fault, now isn't it?
>
> Yup - thats why microsoft.com got shut down in early 2003 with the
> Slammer (aka Sapphire) worm. Personally, I don't follow the latest
> malware - I'm seeing more reports of unopened mail on windoze boxes
> managing to bypass all security, but that's of passing interest at
> most. Sort of like your daily fix from rec.humor.funny.

All caused by one employee. So who do you blame, MS or the employee?
I blame both. Although that one employee actually caused the
problem. As the rest of them didn't cause a problem, now did they?
Except the one responsible from keeping a virus from the inside LAN.

> >Maybe better, stay away from XP if you can help it and use Windows
> >2000 instead.
>
> Why? I haven't seen a need to run any version of windoze at home or
> at work in years.

Well if you don't want to run Windows, then more power to you. What
can I say? Although I can't do the same since drivers and software
is plentiful in the Windows environment that others can't match.
Thus the single *big* reason why most of us use Windows. Can others
offer the same? Hell no!

> >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8859-1
> >>
> >> I've never considered them an authority.
> >
> >So what are you saying?
>
> wikipedia.org isn't noted as being the final authority.

Doesn't matter! Is the group for ISO-8859-1 is supporting it or not?

> >Every RFC document seems to me to be a draft standard. Is it just me?
>
> [compton ~]$ zgrep -c '^[0-9]' rfcs/rfc-index.10.14.05.txt.gz
> 4176
> [compton ~]$ zgrep -A1 Status rfcs/rfc-index.10.14.05.txt.gz | tr -s ' '
> '\n' | tr '\n' ' ' | tr ')' '\n' | grep 'Status: [A-Z]' | sed s'/.*(//'
> | sort | uniq -c | column
> 112 Status: BEST CURRENT PRACTICE 1269 Status: INFORMATIONAL
> 116 Status: DRAFT STANDARD 1220 Status: PROPOSED STANDARD
> 241 Status: EXPERIMENTAL 86 Status: STANDARD
> 145 Status: HISTORIC 909 Status: UNKNOWN
> [compton ~]$ zgrep -c '^[0-9]* *Not Issued' rfcs/rfc-index.10.14.05.txt.gz
> 78
> [compton ~]$
>
> I could say "it's just you" - but I won't. There are a few. For example,
> RFC0821 and 0822 are standards for SMTP and text messages and both have
> been "obsoleted" (by RFC2821 and 2822), but the original docs remain listed
> as "STANDARD", and the replacements are only a "PROPOSED STANDARD". (In case
> you can't follow the commands above - first one says there are 4176 RFCs.
> The second strips out the status term and counts them - the last notes that
> 78 were not issued.)

The problem with standards is they disallow innovation. The best you
can do with RFC is patch the dang thing. It is a sorry ass standard
today. And it holds us back technology-wise today.

>